Sugars says that if you improve all five areas that you can influence (leads, conversion rate, average dollar sale, number of transactions, and profit margin), you’ll dramatically improve your business.

In this post, I’m going to give you some ideas for increasing the number of transactions you make:

Sales is a numbers game. Double your leads and you should, on average, double your prospects, which should double your sales.

Add products or services to your sales funnel to broaden the possibility of a sale. They may be smaller sales but you’ll have helped your contact make the leap from “prospect” to “customer”. From there, you can pursue further opportunities.

When writing proposals, offer 2-4 tiers of service and include a page of “you might also be interested in…” services.

Pull out your “previous customers” list and create special packages and new services to offer to them.

Increasing the speed in which you present to your prospects can increase your transactions.

Offer discounts to those who will refer you to someone else who also buys.

Schedule time to make specific recommendations to every current customer. These should be recommendations for new products or services.

If you use multiple methods of generating leads, pay attention to which method generates the highest percentage of buyers. Increase the leads generated by that method.

Test a pop-up store, if applicable. In fact, explore other ways of transacting business. After all, increasing transactions might just be a matter of increasing the ways that people can buy from you.

Put prospects who say “no” into a holding pattern of unique, value-added content that can keep you at the top of their minds until they are ready to buy from you.

There will be some leads who do not qualify to be your customers and you can either find new ways to serve them (or, you should create an affiliate agreement with a provider who can help them so that you still earn money from them). Look carefully at this group to see if you are sending off a group of people who you can sell to (but in a different way than you have been).